They have also violated an important Code of Conduct [1], to the point of even aggressively closing valid complaints [2]. The Googlers RupertBenWiser [3] and yoavweiss [4] are really just toeing the Google line. What's super gross is even yoavweiss tried to play pretend that the original issue they forced closed, without comments or reading, was "spam" [5]. I believe both of these users are acting in very-bad-faith, and not correctly observing any ethical codes of conduct in Engineering.
It's super telling they know by how they are acting, by locking down the GitHub repo.
It's very depressing how far both Google and Googlers have fallen. What was once a home to innovation, growth, and technical creation is now just ads, abusing their market position to give Chrome an insane advantage during the later years of the browser wars, and more of the same.
It's probably time to bring anti-trust action against Google. Also if you're not already, please move to Firefox and stop using Chrome. Mozilla stands against this and these engineers pushing it [6].
Claims of code of conduct violations on the basis that the technical proposal itself is a violation of the Positive Work Environment provisions is a stretch. It is, however, a clear violation of the Priority of Constituencies[1], including the dictum about who is in control: the Web must enhance individuals' control and power[2].
Having said that, the comment that Weiss links to when citing himself...:
> I understand many folks here are upset about this proposal. I urge you to actually read the proposal, rather than rely on rumors about what it does or doesn't propose. If it's at all helpful, I wrote a few words about ways you can constructively engage with proposals you don't like.
... almost certainly does run afoul of the W3C's provisions for acceptable and unacceptable behavior outlined in the code of ethics and professional conduct. Implying that someone who is "upset" about the proposal is responding to rumors and that it is okay to admonish them to "actually read [it]" is both uncharitable and noxious to the discussion. There's a good reason why HN, for example, has an explicit rule against accusing people of not having read the article.
I wish it didn't take bad faith efforts to enforce anti-trust laws, if we even get there with Google.
Im not a fan of big government and regulation, but if we're going to have anti-trust laws on the books they should be enforced evenly. It's so crazy to me that Bill Gates got raked through the coals for years over IE while Google and Apple have been allowed to get away with much, much worse.
Unless the parent comment was edited to remove some details your bar on “doxxing” somebody is pretty low. Linking to somebody’s public GitHub profile isn’t revealing any private information. Both participated in the discourse on GitHub— it’s not like finding their profiles would be difficult.
Linking to public profiles and GitHub discussions isn't doxxing. Sharing the Googlers' private, personal information would be but I at least don't see anything like that in the GP post now.
As far as I am concerned the reputation of this Ben Wiser guy is so far down the toilet that there’s practically nothing he can do or say to recover it.
Both RupertBenWiser and yoavweiss reputations are fully gone from this. Pretty much the moment they closed an issue without a single comment [1], locked the repo from everyone else, and then a much later time claiming it was "spam" is a pretty dirty tactic [2].
Of course nothing happened to their reputations. Unfortunately there are very few people who care about this, or now who the people are in these proposals.
A reminder: the tech lead for AMP who promptly closed all discussions critical of AMP and AMP for email, and banned people who raised the questions repeatedly is now the CTO of Vercel.
Lol yep sure, almost every website out there uses Recaptcha, Cloudflare and similar services, but they all totally hate the guys who work on stuff like that.
The bubblethink here is out of control. A clear majority of website operators would love this tech to exist because the pile of hacks and user-hostile verification systems that currently keep bots and fraud at bay are time limited, and always have been.
I mean, is the yoavweiss in the wrong here? The #112 issue does look like spam (pretending to care about diversity in hope of making problems for the maintainer, because diversity issues are taken very seriously at Google).
Don't get me wrong, I hate this proposal too and I hope it gets dismantled and forgotten. But I would probably do the same, as an owner of a controversial repository that somehow got to the top of HN frontpage.
[0] https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/...